A Natural-Rule-Based-Connection (NRBC) Method for River Network Extraction from High-Resolution Imagery

Remote Sensing

Chuiqing Zeng¹  Stephen Bird⁴  James J. Luce²  Jinfei Wang¹  Deepak R. Mishra³  Eurico J. D’Sa³  Sachidananda Mishra³  Xiaofeng Li³ 

[1]Department of Geography, University of Western Ontario, London, ON N6A 5C2, Canada

[2] E-Mail:

[3]Aquatic Research and Monitoring Section, Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry, Trent University, Peterborough, ON K9J 7B8, Canada

[4] E-Mail:

[5]Department of Geography, University of Western Ontario, London, ON N6A 5C2, Canada

[6] E-Mail

[7]Fluvial Systems Research Inc., White Rock, BC V4B 0A7, Canada

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关键词: river;    water body;    feature detection;    segment connection;    center line;   

DOI  :  10.3390/rs71014055

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

This study proposed a natural-rule-based-connection (NRBC) method to connect river segments after water body detection from remotely sensed imagery. A complete river network is important for many hydrological applications. While water body detection methods using remote sensing are well-developed, less attention has been paid to connect discontinuous river segments and form a complete river network. This study designed an automated NRBC method to extract a complete river network by connecting river segments at polygon level. With the assistance of an image pyramid, neighbouring river segments are connected based on four criteria: gap width (Tg), river direction consistency (Tθ), river width consistency (Tw), and minimum river segment length (Tl). The sensitivity of these four criteria were tested, analyzed, and proper criteria values were suggested using image scenes from two diverse river cases. The comparison of NRBC and the alternative morphological method demonstrated NRBC’s advantage of natural rule based selective connection. We refined a river centerline extraction method and show how it outperformed three other existing centerline extraction methods on the test sites. The extracted river polygons and centerlines have a multitude of end uses including rapidly mapping flood extents, monitoring surface water supply, and the provision of validation data for simulation models required for water quantity, quality and aquatic biota assessments. The code for the NRBC is available on GitHub.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.